Saturday, February 26, 2005

Take a Picture, It Lasts Longer

So, I'm listening to Sara Cox on BBC1 when this news bit comes on about British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.

Now, illegal treatment of prisoners (or anyone for that matter) in a war zone (it is an area of great tension and conflict) at the hands of soldiers is not a new concept - even when it's by the hands of the proverbial 'good guys'. We've been seeing news bits like this for years, with Canadians causing problems in Rwanda, UN peacekeepers making trouble elsewhere, and the Americans having just dealt with a similar instance last year.

In both the British and the American cases the soldiers took pictures of their deeds, showing their subjects in situations like being tied to a forklift (in the Brit case), which just baffles the hell out of me. Either they don't understand what they're doing is wrong (otherwise why create a film roll full of evidence) or they don't care, and I don't know which one is worse. Here's a quote from the article that just baffled me:

Photographs, including humiliating sexual images of naked Iraqis, were taken by another soldier, Gary Bartlam, 20, who then took them to be developed at a shop in his hometown of Tamworth, Staffordshire, where an assistant called in police.

Gee, you think?

I've got some pretty strong opinions on the subject, but I'm not going to get into them here. Meanwhile... is primarily an entertainment blog, so I'll leave the soapboxing to whether Identity Crisis helped or hindered the comic industry in 2004 and stay away from anything that'll get me on anybody's 'to watch' list.